This paper aims to re-conceptualize the tripod of the process of reading a novel, that is, the concepts of the reader, the novel and the novelist. With this in view, the research opted for Henry Lefebvre's triadic conception of space, namely, representations of space, spaces of representation and social practice in his book, The Production of Space (1991). The other related concepts in Lefebvre's oeuvre are the lived, perceived and conceived spaces and the mental, physical and social space. The main premises in Lefebvre's book are that space is both a social production and a political category. Social practice as the order of 'production' includes literature and the novel, too. Representations of space is, among all others, the space of 'social engineers and of a certain type of artist'. It is always a conceived and abstract space since it subsumes ideology. Spaces of representation are the lived space in contrast to the domination of the conceived space. They are subject to intervention and usurpation, challenging perceptions by the imaginative use of space. According to Lefebvre, it is space of ‘inhabitants’, ‘users’ where the imagination seeks to change and appropriate. The premises of this paper are that planning is an ideology; that the novel is a space wherein the reader, narrative space and novelist play their own roles. Within the social practice of literature and, more specifically, novels, the novelist is a producer of representations of space and the reader an 'inhabitant' of their own spaces of representation. Not only does the novel space turn into a site of power relations wherein the reader might resist the representations of space but also it grants them the opportunity to produce a differential space, heterotopia(s)-hence the perpetual pleasure of reading novel.
